'Jackass' actor admits to SeaWorld prank

Steve O's SeaWorld protest

San Diego  “Jackass” star Steve-O admitted this week that he was the person who turned a San Diego freeway sign into a protest against SeaWorld earlier this year.

Caltrans officials said the stunt cost taxpayers more than $7,000, endangered highway workers who had to make repairs and inconvenienced motorists.

A video posted Tuesday on YouTube called “Breaking the law,” shows him defacing the center-median sign on Interstate 5 last May by changing “Sea World Drive" to “Sea World Sucks” using a poster and tape.

“I’m putting my foot down for Shamu,” the star of the MTV reality show says at the start of the 2:05 minute video.

The demonstration came in response to the controversy stirred by the film “Blackfish,” which criticized the marine park’s treatment of killer whales.

In the video, Steve-O is shown trying to scale the sign twice with a rope and a rope ladder over the course of two days, before he finally gets a long, metal ladder and climbs onto the platform, where he secures the word onto the display.

He then stands up and holds his arms in the air.

“If doing that was wrong, I don’t want to be right,” says the comedian at the end of the video. On his website, he admits that he knew what he did violated the law. “I filmed myself committing a crime in the middle of California’s 5 Freeway,” he wrote.

Caltrans agreed and issued the following statement: “We consider defacing public property at a cost to state taxpayers an unlawful act and a dangerous distraction for motorists, said agency spokesman Steve Saville. “The stunt exposed our highway workers to the unnecessary risk of making the repairs in traffic and eventually again in replacing the damaged sign. ”

A crew was dispatched May 25 to remove the vandalism at a cost of $300, said Saville.

When the tape used to adhere the word was removed, it pulled off the reflective sheeting on the display, so the sign then had to be replaced, at a cost of more than $7,000, which included the sign, the crew and the equipment used.

The agency said there is no way to place a dollar amount on the danger to which the crew was exposed, nor the disruption to drivers who had to deal with two closed freeway lanes as the repairs were made.

The CHP has not yet said if criminal charges will be pursued in the prank.